<p>I am taking AP chem this year, and it's hell! so I'm wondering if it will help in college,when I take general chemistry...</p>
<p>Depends where you go to high school and where you end up for college. I went to a top public high school and took AP Chem. It was a breeze compared to my gen chem class at Penn. In comparison, my friends who went to Maryland found gen chem to be a repeat and all jumped up to orgo. I would say AP Chem helped me in college, maybe with 1/2 of the material from each semester. In college we covered a lot more material, threw bits of calculus in there, some advanced theories, and other fun stuff not in an AP class.</p>
<p>For me general chem was pretty much a repeat of AP chem. (In other words, taking AP chem helped a LOT, because I'd seen all the material before.)</p>
<p>I only took second-semester gen Chem (I could have exempted both semesters, but was afraid of O-Chem) and I definitely felt it to be a repeat of AP Chemistry. From what I hear, though, first-semester gen Chem is a weeder course, so they make you memorize a lot of worthless minutia that make it more difficult than AP Chem was.</p>
<p>AP Chem helped only in the fact that I remembered all my solubility rules; for everything else, I was hopelessly dominated despite having gotten a 4. We got weed-whacked.</p>
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<p>Depends on teacher</p>
<p>I found AP Chem a lot harder than Gen Chem. I wouldn't call that as a generalization though. It just seemed that much more had to be covered in AP Chem[as the teachers never know what will actually be on the exam] than in Gen Chem[where they know what will be on the exams as they directly make them].</p>
<p>^It's true that gen chem at Penn was easier to study for than the AP exam, but the material was tougher, at least compared to my AP class.</p>
<p>Completely depends on the high school you came from. I took gen chem at Penn this past semestser and for me it was totally different and harder than AP Chem.</p>
<p>I agree, it depends on both the college and high schools. My high school had a near-impossible AP Chem. Everyone hated it. At my college, it's a joke. It was one of my easiest classes and I barely went to it.</p>
<p>Wow, I'm surprised. Did you guys learn stuff about the wave function of electrons and stuff in AP Chem?</p>
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Wow, I'm surprised. Did you guys learn stuff about the wave function of electrons and stuff in AP Chem?
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I don't know if all gen chem classes cover this. My honors gen chem class did, but I know that the regular gen chem at my school does not. Either way, both the regular and honors sections of gen chem at my school are harder than any AP chem class I've seen.</p>
<p>My AP Chem class was tough at the time, but it really helped in college, b/c two out of my three teachers for gen chem were horrible. overall, i enjoyed chem somewhat more in college b/c of AP chem.</p>
<p>i was angry though because i could have skipped chem at my current school and gone straight into o chem, but b/c i transferred, it didn't work out. oh well.</p>
<p>gen chem was a joke for me</p>
<p>Must depend on the high school AND the college because my son took regular chemistry at a "very competitive" high school and found it similar to chemistry at a "not-so-competive" college.</p>